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THE NATION: Jakarta riots provoked,
- Subject: THE NATION: Jakarta riots provoked,
- From: suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 05:02:00
Headlines
Jakarta riots provoked,
says panel
JAKARTA -- In a report detailing the
possible involvement of security forces in
last month's riots in Jakarta, the Indonesian
Commission of Human Rights has called
on the newly-installed President B J
Habibie's administration to investigate why
troops did not prevent or fight the riots.
Commissioner Asmara Nababan said on
Tuesday the passive gesture of the military
during the riots had created an image that
they had tolerated the rioters, and
demanded that the government look into
''an organisation'' which had started and
triggered the rioting, burning and looting
between May 14 and May 16.
Unlike previous government statements
which said only around 500 people were
found dead in the riots, the commission
also concluded in a statement, signed by
the board members of the commission, that
1,188 people had died.
When asked whether it could confirm
rumours that there was a plot to engineer
the riots, commissioner Marzuki Darusman
said the public should not bank too much on
it.
''The Commission does not want to make
statements of a speculative nature. It is,
therefore, important that the government
and the Armed Forces should explain
openly the three big incidents that had
happened prior to the riots,'' he said.
Rumours circulating here said that in a bid
to intimidate the opposition, some
elements of the military had kidnapped
dozens of human rights activists as well as
shot dead four students at the Trisakti
University in Jakarta on May 12 which
sparked public anger and led to the riots.
Some army generals close to Lt-Gen
Prabowo Subianto, the then commander of
the army strategic and reserve command,
who is married to the middle daughter of
former president Suharto, Siti Hediyati,
were allegedly involved in the kidnappings
and killings.
The rumours gained momentum especially
after Prabowo was abruptly replaced not
more than 36 hours after his father-in-law,
who had been in power since 1965,
decided to resign on May 21. Some other
generals were also demoted.
Many also believe that the riots, whose
main victims were ethnic Chinese
Indonesians, were provoked to deflect
public anger from the Suhartos to the
Chinese, a minority community which
controls much of the retail business.
A R T Kemasang of the University of
Bradford in England, a British specialist on
anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia, whose
thesis on the 1740 massacre of the
Chinese during the Dutch colonial period
had sparked some academic debate in the
1980s, told The Nation
in a telephone interview earlier this week
that the pattern of last month's riots was
classic.
''The Chinese are targeted by those whom
I call 'political bullies' who have no
programme bar that of immediate
short-term gains,'' Kemasang said, adding
that the attack on the Chinese was
instigated by agents provocateur working
for Prabowo and ''backward-looking
Muslims wanting to bring the whole
situation to anarchy in which they believe
they could benefit by exacting
concessions from the military''.
Kemasang said that attacks against
Chinese-descent Indonesians, who have
lived in Indonesia for generations and do
not speak Mandarin, are always
orchestrated by those with vested
interests, hidden agendas or ulterior
motives.
''They [the riots] are not spontaneous. So it
has nothing to do with what the Chinese
have done or not done. It has everything to
do with history, the fact that the Dutch had
made them into a problem minority for
buffer-cum-scapegoat in the colonial
divide-and-rule,'' Kemasang said.
BY ANDREAS HARSONO
The Nation